The Fano surface of the Fermat cubic threefold, the del Pezzo surface of degree 5 and a ball quotient

We study the Fano surface S of the Fermat cubic threefold. We prove that S is a degree 81 abelian cover of the degree 5 del Pezzo surface and that the complement of the union of 12 disjoint elliptic curves on S is a ball quotient. The lattice of this ball quotient is related to the Deligne-Mostow lattice number 1.Comment: 8 pages, extended and final version, to appear in the Proc. of. A.M.

The Fano surface of the Klein cubic threefold

We prove that the Klein cubic threefold $F$ is the only smooth cubic threefold which has an automorphism of order 11. We compute the period lattice of the intermediate Jacobian of $F$ and study its Fano surface $S$. We compute also the set of fibrations of $S$ onto a curve of positive genus and the intersection between the fibres of these fibrations. These fibres generate an index 2 sub-group of the N\'eron-Severi group and we obtain a set of generators of this group. The N\'eron-Severi group of $S$ has rank $25=h^{1,1}$ and discriminant $11^{10}$.Comment: 15 page